CALCAREOUS MANURES— APPENDIX. 237 



City county, in Virginia, made earlier than mine ; and still earlier by the 

 Rev. John Singleton, in Talbot county, Maryland. It appears that the 

 early (though chance-directed) combination of putrescent manures with 

 marl, in both these places, served to prove the value of the latter, and per- 

 haps to prevent it being there also abandoned as worthless, as in the other 

 cases. But though the application was continued, and with great success 

 and profit, the knowledge of these facts and the example extended very 

 slowly ; and the then want of communication among farmers kept all ig- 

 norant of these practices for years, except in the immediate vicinity of the 

 commencement of each. I have since endeavored to ascertain the time of 

 the first applications in James City, and have been informed that it was in 

 1816. Mr. Singleton's, in Maryland, were begun as early as 1805. His 

 own account of his practice (which will be annexed, as an interesting state- 

 ment of the earliest profitable use of this manure,) was first published in 

 1818, in the 4th volume of the Memoirs of the Philadelphia Agricultural 

 Society, (page 238.) The date of his letter is Dec. 31, 1817. My first ex- 

 periment was made the following month, (Jan. 1818,) but more than a year 

 before 1 met with Mr. Singleton's publication, or had heard of any applica- 

 tion of fossil shells, except the two failures mentioned in page 70. But, 

 however beneficial may have been found the operation of niarl in Talbot 

 and in James City, it is evident, from &Ir. Singleton's letter, and from all 

 other sources of information, that the mode of operation remained altoge- 

 ther unsuspected by those who used it ; and this was perhaps the principal 

 cause why the practice was so slow in spreading. It is now [1835] thirty 

 years since the first proofs were exhibited on the land of Mr. Smgleton ; 

 yet, according to the report of the geological survey of the lower part of 

 Maryland, (submitted to the legislature of Maryland at its recent session of 

 1834-5,) it appears, though the value of marl is well understood, and 

 much use of it made in Talbot county, and part of Queen Ann's county, 

 yet that almost no use has been made of it on the other and much 

 more extensive parts of the Eastern Shore of Maryland — and none what- 

 ever west of the Chesapeake in that state, where it is found in abundance. 

 Such at least are the inferences from Mr. Ducatel's report, though in part 

 drawn from indirect testimony, more than direct and particular assertions. 



The slight, and almost contemptuous manner, in which marl is mentioned 

 by so well informed an agriculturist as Taylor, as late as 1814, when his 

 Arator was published, (and which remained unaltered in his 3d edition of 

 1817,) proves that almost nothing was then known of the value of this 

 manure. All that seems to relate to our abundant deposites of fossil shells, 

 or to marl generally, is contained in the two following passages : 



"Without new accessions of vegetable matter, successive heavy dress- 

 ings with lime, gypsum, and even marl, have been frequently found to ter- 

 minate in impoverishment. Hence it is inferred, that minerals operate as 

 an excitement only to the manure furnished by the atmosphere. From this 

 fact results the impossibility of removing an exhausted soil, by resorting to 

 fossils, which will expel the poor remnant of life ; and indeed it is hardly 

 probable that divine ivisdom has lodged in the boivels of the earth the manure 

 necessary for its surfaced — Arator, p. 52, 2cZ edition, Baltimore. 



" Of lime and marl we have an abundance, but experience does not 

 entitle me to say anything of either." — Id. p. 80. 



From the Rev. John Singleton, to the Hon. Wm. Tilghman. 

 • ••«•***** 



" Your first question is, ' whether what I use be raarl, or soil mixed with shf Us .'' 

 " Whether it be marl or not, I will not pretend to determine, as I have seen no de- 



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